The present invention relates to an input device and more particularly to a keyboard displayed on a display screen, which keyboard is hereinafter referred to as virtual keyboard.
On a conventional keyboard, one may input a capital character (alphabet) by pushing down on a Shift-key first and then keeping the shift key in the pushed state, pushing and releasing a desired character key. After this, one releases the shift key.
On the other hand, a virtual keyboard works for determining a character key of a keyboard presented on a display screen by comparing position information received from an output of a transparent pressure (touch)-sensitive panel disposed on the display screen with position information of keys of the keyboard presented on the display screen and outputting a character indicated on a corresponding character key.
Accordingly, on the virtual keyboard, any small character (alphabet) is input by pushing a corresponding key of the keyboard indicated on the display screen and any capital character is input in a shift mode, namely, by pushing a shift key first and a corresponding character key next. In practice of inputting a capital character (e.g., “I”), one must push and release the shift key to change over the input mode to Capital input mode, must push and release the key <I> to input the character “I” and, then, must push and release the shift key again to release the Capital input mode.
On the above-described virtual keyboard, however, the number of push-and-release operations is larger than by one on the conventional keyboard. This is inconvenient and unpleasant for those who have been familiar to the conventional keyboard.